Poll: Fewer and fewer Americans think liberals have been waging a War on Christmas

All the phony right-wing rhetoric about a War on Christmas increasingly is falling on deaf ears, as we see HERE:

Another winter solstice has come and gone, and yes, the annual celebration of the birth of Jesus has again survived the alleged War on Christmas. In fact, as of this year, this pretend war might finally be ending — and not because those “defending” Christmas won some big battle, but because more and more Americans are realizing there is no such war at all.

This is one of the key findings of a new poll about Christmas from Fairleigh Dickinson University. In that survey, only 28 percent of respondents said they think liberals are waging a war on Christmas. That’s a steep decline from last year, when a Public Policy Polling survey found that 47 percent of Americans think there is a war against the holiday.

All of this is good news — especially because these welcome public opinion trends are coinciding with a renewed effort by the divide-and-conquer crowd to continue manufacturing division. Indeed, as just one example, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly tried to make the War on Christmas meme into a full-on race war by insisting that both Santa Claus and Jesus must be depicted as white. Apparently, Rupert Murdoch’s cable television empire is still trying to turn the holiday into another excuse to promote conflict. Thankfully, polls show that the tactic isn’t working.

Of course, using the word “holiday” in reference to anything around Jesus’ birthday is apparently still seen as controversial in many quarters. Yes, in the same Fairleigh Dickinson poll, two-thirds of respondents want “Merry Christmas” rather than the more universal “Happy Holidays” used as the season’s greetings. Similarly, only about a quarter of Americans think public schools should host non-religious events instead of explicitly religious Christmas festivities.

This, alas, is the residual bad news in the aftermath of the War on Christmas, for it embodies a my-way-or-the-highway narcissism that runs counter to the nation’s founding principles.

Remember, this is supposed to be a country that respects everyone’s right to his or her own religious traditions. While there are certainly lamentable instances of overt religious persecution here in America (see sporadic attacks on mosques), we for the most part do a decent job of respecting people’s basic right to worship. However, respect also involves an awareness that not everyone is — or has to be — of your particular faith.

That means not presuming everyone follows one religion and it also means not trying to foist one tradition on everyone else. In practical terms, it means not wanting one religion’s particular greeting to be the only acceptable one. It also means making sure that secular, government-run spaces do not promote one religious tradition over all others.

The opposite of that is the definition of presumptive — or worse. Sometimes, the demands for “Merry Christmas” and Christmas-themed school-celebrations seem like aggressive attempts to deliberately make people of other traditions feel as if they are outsiders. And not just any old outsiders, but outsiders who are so unwelcome that their participation in another religious tradition shouldn’t even warrant the most minimal form of civility — like, say, a more inclusive salutation.